Earlier this year four members of the Nano Membrane Toilet team traveled to Ghana to hear from our potential users and get their input into the design of the toilet.
We were really pleased to work with Clean Team who made sure we got all the surveys done (103!) and pre-tested them for us. We were keen to talk to their customers as they have already made the decision to invest in an aspirational sanitation product, so we thought they would have some useful ideas for us. Clean Team work across six districts of the city of Kumasi which allowed us to observe the many differences
in style of houses, income levels, religion and water supplies.
Jake interviews one of the Clean Team customers
People seemed very open to most of the concepts around
the toilet: the water would be useful for cleaning, as even where people had
taps in the house metering was becoming commonplace so there’s a money saving
from the reuse. Very few people liked the idea of drinking it, although one
woman did say that since we had come from a University in England we must be
doing a good job and therefore if I said the water was safe to drink she would
be happy with it!
The potential for charging mobile phones from a toilet lit up
almost everyone’s eyes, partially just the concept but also because, despite
everyone we spoke to having electricity in the house, the dreaded
‘doomsa-doomsa’ - power cuts - were so common that getting caught short
of phone battery during the blackouts was a big headache for many people!
Ross takes a respondent through the a hidden needs assessment
Ross contemplates the consequences of poor sanitation
We'll publish our full report shortly, and will also present the details of the perspectives on water reuse at the forthcoming WEDC Conference in Loughborough (UK) in July 2015.
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